prudery, and peevishness. If these conceptions were true it would dispose of all the talk about female hardships. But they are not true, and the amount of it all is, that scarcity of female help turned many things to male hands, that are in Europe attended to by women; and it made the marriage relation much more an intimate home-life than in Europe. As hired girls multiplied, the husbands disappeared again from the kitchens, the nurseries, and other precincts, mostly from their own good sense, but if not, by hints and demonstrations, which I need not describe. These processes are still happily going on, and it will not be long before Europeans can come over here and meet facsimiles of their households in all the varieties. and grades of human existences.

We join in no useless wails at the inevitable reaction, that has set in upon us. We propose to accept the situation now, and to advise others to do so. We think, that all the complaints of restless males and females, amount, when analyzed, simply to the crotchet, that it would have been better if creation in Paradise had stopped with the original manus homo. Let those who think so organize an exodus for their sex respectively on some island. Those of us, who do not, will prefer to fight it out on the old line. We have passed as a good society, during the past fifty years, from a much-dispersed society to one more densely populated but hardly settled. The old folks had their troubles; the young folks theirs, and so will their successors. The early settlers solved their difficulties by reconciling their behavior with surrounding circumstances; and our age is but repeating the operation, that will go on to the end of time. Society is ever in motion, American society only a little more so. The changes are here more frequent and more rapid; hence our wiseacres are more puzzled with all their jumping at conclusions. Oregon is to-day, where Ohio was seventy-five years ago; Ohio is where the eastern states were in the early part of this century. And the Atlantic states are but our pioneer in leading the way to assimilations with European social conditions. And they are ever changing, ever varying, but also ever equating differences.

A wise obedience to necessities is ever the right path; happy the people that follow it.

The opposite course is that, which lies in the propensity to first unsettle, and then settle men and things by voting. We men owe to our good women the amende honorable for not telling them long ago, that we have not mended society in that way; but have rather played havoc with ourselves. Our mistake was, that we took, blindfolded political, path-finding for

government. What male universal suffrage came to, in America, after seventy years' voting, Disraeli, with whom we seldom agree, states with remarkable correctness: "They began with fraternity and universal charity; and ended in bloodshed and spoliation." Some women tell us, that had there been female as well as male suffrage, and the result would have been more humane as well as more wise. We cannot gainsay it, except by putting surmise against surmise, which is no argument. We can only pass the subject to others for further elucidation.

CHAPTER XXVI.

COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM.

"One man cannot of himself fulfil the object of his life and existence; it requires besides manifold associative co-operation."-Thomas of Aquin.

WHEN Aristotle pronounced man to be a Zooon Politicon, he stated the truth that is the key to every social and political problem; and to it Thomas of Aquin added the reason, as quoted above. And all that have worked for human progress have acted on these perceptions, and urged the perfection of human society through the formation of bodies-politic. We can name but a few of the greater men, for to name all would fill a book. They are Solon, Lycurgus, Moses, Confucius, Plato, Dante, Sir Thomas More, Grote, Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Harrington, Montesquieu, Fenelon, Beccaria, Adam Smith, Bentham, Franklin, Babeuf, Owen, St. Simon, Comte, Lasalle, and last, not least, our own Carey, of Philadelphia-all striving to relieve their fellow-mortals of their weakness as single beings, and to induce them to overcome it by fellowship; none without some error, none without much more truth, and each successor adding to the general progress; many ideal propositions, but all resting on the actualities of life, and being co-laborers in what Pope calls

"The general order since the whole began,

Is kept in Nature, and is kept in man.'

But side by side with these progressives has been another class of men, whose premise was man's natural self-sufficiency. They had to accept, in spite of themselves, a minimum of existence as their standard of life, and, as to government, their model could not well be any other than a self-governing monad man. They had to reject the perfectibility of mankind by social and political organization, and their basis had to remain, what they called "natural laws," which, whenever it was analyzed, turned out to be mere animalism. The true inner nature of man never allowed this tendency to be carried to the

nihilism which was really its principle, though Kai-Muni or Buddha, Diogenes and Pachomius came very near it.

After the dark ages had passed away, and after the Renaissance had re-enlightened human conduct, Quakerism attempted to revive human self-sufficiency in a friendlier form, and Anna Lee restored Monachism with cohabitation of the sexes. And Bastiat's still lovelier mind added "the Harmonies Economiques" or "self-sufficiency of society" under inorganic conditions. Their common error is: that they mistook the higher animalism of man, his crown of glory, his inextinguishable desire, to enhance his existence, for artificialness. They saw the increased dangers which sprang out of every advance in human life, and jumped at the conclusion that, not to progress is safer, than to augment human capacities. But they did not see that the same law exists throughout nature, to wit: that the more powerful the forces are which man subjects to his use, the more careful he has to be in their employment. Why argue as to political matters for an entire disuse or a minimum, when in mechanics and the employment of natural forces generally, we are ever striving for an augmentation, subject to wise control? We shall meet this question again further on.

Before proceeding we must, however, call attention to one of the causes that has given to our theme a fluctuating and indefinite character. It is, in our opinion, that it never went by a generally accepted comprehensive name. Many would, in spite of themselves, mistake this or that phase of the subject for the whole question. This has particularly been the case as to Communism and Socialism, each presenting but one aspect, and yet taken and used by the public as if they were identical. They both belong indeed to one subject, to wit: the conversion of private wealth and individual possessions into public wealth or collective possessions. To us, fully as we recognize the difficulty of coining a proper joint-name for our subject, it seems, that to call it "commonwealthism" will much facilitate our inquiries. It will assist us to understand at once that Communism and Socialism are but modalities of an ever-existing human necessity, which assumes in our day peculiar shapes in consequence of the special conditions of the respective human societies. The name "Commonwealth" for "Republic" has been adopted, as we think, in consequence of a change in the public mind as to the objects of government, and our word but expresses the mutations herein that distinguish our century.

All our conceptions on the subject must rest on the premise that private wealth precedes public wealth, and is its pre-condition. The moment more is taken than can be easily spared

by individuals, all creations of public wealth become suicidal, because they stop the principal motive of all human production-self-enjoyment-and the fountain itself dries up. The severest charge in the Declaration of Independence was: the sending of swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."

But even moderate conversions must produce corresponding public benefits-that is to say, all must feel better for the expenditure than they would do without it. And this advantage to society must be palpable and as near direct as possible; for public wealth nourishes the public spirit it needs, and makes it the healthier the more appreciable the good done is to those who pay for it. There should be antecedent to and concurrent with all conversion of private into public wealth, the transmutation of individual into a public will or spirit. Every individual must feel that he is at the same time a private as well as public person, and he must be both too high-toned to receive anything gratis from the State, as to submit to being imposed upon by unjust exactions. He must not only have his: sic semper tyrannis, but he must also be ever on his guard that he is not a tyrant himself.

Not commonwealthism, per se, then, but that which exists. under false pretences, is dangerous. Individuals in society must seek their full development through public organisms that come in aid to their single faculties. A social status without them is simple barbarism. Excessive, fraudulent, or defective employment of them is, on the other hand, sickly civilization; but well-measured and adequate commonwealthism is the very soul of sound civilization. To dispute, therefore, whether there shall be public organization at all is worse than idle, it is blindfolding society. The realists and nominalists of the Middle Ages used to dispute whether things that are, are? They wasted a mass of acute thinking, but accomplished nothing. So as to the subject before us. We must accept the fact, that men need the aid of others, and that in principle there is no difference between the babe's cry for milk and an adult's wish for roads, &c. Those who object to an organic society because it is claimed to be less natural in that status than when it is disorganic, are no wiser than those who object to a grape because wine made from it may intoxicate. They would confine nature to the production of pebble-stones, just to keep it simple.

The necessity for political organization exists! That fact must be recognized, and then must follow the determination to organize it well and to keep it right. Neither society, nor government, nor individuals cure themselves. The spectacle of